


Swift to Hear

by FabulaRasa



Category: DCU, DCU (Movies), DCU - Comicverse, DCU Animated
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 04:39:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark's superhearing gets him into trouble, when he hears the one thing he's not supposed to hear — and the one thing he maybe should have heard a long time ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swift to Hear

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Schemingreader for her incisive edits, because even though she is a Marvel fangirl she stepped into my sandbox to play, and showed me how to do everything better.

When he was young, Martha Kent had taken her son to a hearing specialist because she thought he was deaf. 

"Not a blessed thing wrong with that boy's hearing," the old doctor had grumped. "He hears better than just about anyone I've ever given this fool test to. If he pretends he can't hear you when it's time to empty the dishwasher, give him a lick or two, and that'll cure him."

Needless to say, no licks were ever dispensed in the Kent household. Martha had sighed and put Clark in the car, and halfway home she had pulled into the parking lot of the Safeway, and they just sat there.

"I'm sorry, Mom," he had whispered, and a small frown had twitched her thin brows. "I'll try to listen better, I swear."

"You don't have to apologize," she had said. "I just want to know why. Why do you act like you can't hear us half the time? Why do you get that look on your face like you're nine thousand miles away? Last week I stood right in back of you and shouted myself blue in the face, and you acted like you couldn't hear me at all. So which doctor do I take you to next? Do we need to see a, you know," and she had stumbled the smallest bit over the word, "a psychiatrist? You tell me what."

He had sat and stared at his hands. He was six, and he already knew she wouldn't understand. It was just that it got to be too much, sometimes: too much, to hear everything, all the time. The hearing wasn't something he could turn off and on. He had no choice, but to hear, and it invaded every part of him, pushed at his fingernails, pulsed in his veins, clawed its way under his skin: the deafening clamor of the whole world's grunts, shouts, screams, and chatterings. Like being locked in the parrot cage at the zoo, and all you could do was cover your ears and shut your eyes. It was a constant cacophony of sound, a solid wall that crashed into him every morning when he woke up and rolled over in bed, and that only subsided with unconsciousness. The only possible way to survive it was to shut down, to shut everything off, to retreat so deep inside nothing could reach him. 

"I'm sorry," was all he had said, again. She had looked at him then, her eyes keen.

"Stop apologizing," she said. "Every time I turn around, you're saying you're sorry for something. We're done with that. We're done with doctors. You stop being sorry for who you are, do you hear me?"

"Yes," he had said solemnly. "I hear you."

He had learned how to manage better since he was six, of course. After a while — after a few years of practice — he had been able to shut out most of what his ears took in, while keeping the relevant information, like someone who learns to concentrate on a conversation over loud music. He could choose what he wanted to hear, for the most part; ignore what was inessential, and focus on what he wished. 

But ignorance had its price. That selective, willful ignorance — that oldest of his survival mechanisms — betrayed him, in the end, because it kept him from hearing what he needed to hear. Should have been hearing for years, maybe, and never had, because at some level long-divorced from conscious thought, somewhere in the rummage bins of his brain, some group of neurons had decided, years ago, that this one sound was unimportant, and tossed it aside. And he had only consciously heard it, in the end, because one evening, when the private chamber in the Batcave was more silent than usual, when it was just Bruce and him and a bank of blinking monitors, when the stillness of damp air deep underground suppressed all sound but their breathing: because one evening, he had loosened his tie. 

_Ka-thunk thunk._

Bruce's heart. 

He had sat up in alarm, because the rhythm wasn't normal. Hearts weren't usually something he zeroed in on. They were everywhere, and largely irrelevant, and they were like the whoosh of air in an air-conditioning return, and about as meaningful. But this he couldn't help but hear: it had been an irregular, clearly non-normal rhythm.

Bruce continued to type. 

"You all right?" Clark asked, and got a cock of eyebrow in return. He subsided. It was probably nothing; plenty of people had occasional irregular rhythms, and rarely were they serious. Bruce was clearly unaware anything had happened. So Clark ignored it.

Ignored it, but not to the point of closing his ears to the sound of Bruce's heart. If there was a problem, if God forbid Bruce had a medical condition that required treatment, it would take someone with Kryptonian muscle strength to wrestle him into the car and to the doctor's office. He tried to imagine Bruce submitting to medical tests. It would probably take the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, a herd of rabid Rottweilers, and a tranq gun just to shove him into an MRI, and even then he'd better be frisked for Batarangs by a team of elementary school librarians. So he listened. 

And. . . nothing. Nothing of note, except that Bruce was so physically toned his resting heart-rate was practically a crawl, and even under stress — or what normal people might have perceived as stress, like taking down a fourteen-foot ogre breathing chunks of flame and oozing magma out its pores — Bruce's heart beat steady and strong, barely hurrying at all. Monitoring his heart was pretty simple to do, because not only were they frequently working together, but Clark was spending more of his "day job" hours in Gotham these days. The Daily Planet had him assigned, for now, to the Gotham metro desk, which meant two or three days of the week actually in Gotham, and that had been an easy one to pull, because it turned out that winning two top journalism prizes in the space of three years meant you got listened to, when it came to desk assignments. 

"Unwise," Bruce had said tersely, when Clark had said as much to him.

"Unwise to ask for Gotham? Come on. I like covering crime, and Gotham's crime rate is about five times that of Metropolis. It's just more interesting," Clark replied, propping his feet on a priceless bit of machinery and considering his beer. "I don't know, maybe the League should think about assigning Green Lantern or even Black Canary to help you out here."

"I meant unwise to win those prizes," Bruce said, ignoring the bait. 

"You want me to be a bad writer."

"No, I want you to be an average writer. Being a good writer gets you attention, and attention gets you found."

"Hm," Clark said. "I see your point about unobtrusiveness. Maybe if I were a multi-billionaire socialite playboy, people would take less notice." 

That got him a withering glare, tempered by a quirk of Bruce's mouth. Clark grinned, stretched, and loosened his tie. 

_Ka-thunk thunk._

His hand froze. 

Bruce had gone back to typing, somewhat more intently than before. Clark sat there unmoving, absorbed in a silence that any other night might have been companionable, but that now had breath and body, at least for him. After a while he got up and left, not sure if Bruce even noticed his departure; Bruce ignored social conventions like hello and good-bye himself, and the up side was he never demanded them from others. 

He flew back to Metropolis that night, because he wanted to be in his own space to think, not in the Gotham hotel room he rented, even though he was supposed to be in Gotham early the next morning. He needed his own apartment to pace in. But when he got there, he discovered it was a short walk, because there were only two possibilities, really:

A) Bruce was made so nervous by physical nakedness, or even an approach to it as simple as loosening a tie in front of a friend, that it caused a stress reaction.

That was a strong possibility, for someone who was only truly relaxed wearing body armor. And yet. . . and yet. It left some things unexplained. For one thing, Clark had been at plenty of social functions in which he had observed Bruce Wayne, multi-billionaire socialite playboy (TM), behaving with what any objective observer would have to call comfort around semi-clad bodies. Last week, in fact. He had been monitoring Bruce's heart, like he had been doing for over a month now, but idly, as background noise. Bruce had been over by the window of his penthouse, playing the gracious host of Gotham's latest and most extravagant charity function, his right hand curled around a champagne flute, and his left hand playing rather more gracious host to the giggly sequined bottom of Mrs. J. Forrest Abernathy, whose stage name had been Kittee Kattay before her marriage. Clark had noted with amusement the exploratory path Bruce's hand was wending down her ass-crack, and he had also noticed that Bruce's heart had beat as steadily — indeed, as lazily — as when flipping through the latest stock report.

As a general rule, Bruce seemed pretty comfortable with semi-nakedness, or at least other people's.

Which left B. 

Possibility B explained a few more things.

Possibility B explained a lot.

Possibility B made his breathing accelerate. Possibility B. . . 

"Stupid," he said aloud. Possibility b was stupid. It was wishful thinking, was what it was, and unbelievably arrogant. He could hear Bruce now: "Let me get this straight," he would growl. "You thought I was sexually attracted," and in Clark's head every syllable was painfully enunciated, "to _you_."

And Clark would stammer, shake his head: "No, not like—see, I only thought—"

"Oh please," Bruce would say, "tell me more about what you thought. I can tell this is going to be good." He would be wearing a business suit, pouring himself a drink by the window of his office. Clark would stand on the rug, not sure what to do with his hands, the blush covering his face, unable to meet Bruce's eyes. 

Still.

It wasn't. . . _completely_ outside the realm of possibility. Granted, possibility A was still the more likely one. But still. More evaluation was needed. A . . . control, of sorts. Which was why he found himself back in the Batcave's private chambers the next night, trying to keep his chatter to Bruce as light and casual as possible, all the while listening, listening for that quiet thump that would tell him what he needed to know.

Wanted to know.

Was terrified to know.

"So Diana wants Kara to spend the summer on Themiscyra," Clark said, leaning over to peer at the monitor to Bruce's right. "Is that feed from Rhelasia?"

"Yes, but I think it's been hacked, on their end. Take a look." A few clicks, and Bruce had pulled up a screen cap from twenty minutes previous. Identical, exactly. 

"That seems unlikely."

"Exactly what I was thinking. I've sent the images to John, he can go check it out. I thought Kara liked Themyscira. You object?"

"No, not exactly object. I just thought, with the school year over, maybe she would want to spend some more time with me, in Metropolis — you know, hanging out. We could do whatever teenage girls do. Roller skating, movies — she seemed to like that sort of thing before. I don't know why her whole summer has to be about weapons training," Clark grumbled. "Besides, I feel weird visiting her there."

"Weird."

"You've never noticed the way everyone looks at you there? They all look. . . suspicious. Like I'm some large, unhousetrained dog that Diana has dragged home, and they're all waiting for me to pee on the carpet or shed on a priceless tapestry or something."

That got him a quiet chuckle. "You could at least tell me how completely wrong I am," Clark said. 

"No, I think your observations are accurate. Take a look at this." He pulled up a comparison screen shot from another feed. 

Clark leaned closer, and as he did so, when he was as close to Bruce as possible and definitely in his line of sight, he deliberately, slowly, loosened his tie. Loosened it as far as it would go, in fact.

Bingo.

Bruce's heart skipped and re-settled, a fraction faster. Slowly, still pretending to be absorbed in the screen, Clark unbuttoned his top button, then his next. He let his hand toy with the third button for a minute, as though he were distracted by something. He hadn't put on an undershirt this morning, on purpose.

_Ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk._

Clark's own heart was beating faster now, as if in answer. He stood and stretched, taking his time, letting his shirt tug out of the waistband a little bit. 

_Ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk._

"Should probably send Shayera to go check that out too," he suggested, keeping his voice neutral. 

"I'm pretty sure she's already on her way. I doubt she'd let John go on his own. About Kara." Bruce wheeled in his chair to face him. "You should learn to be more manipulative. You should bribe her. You've got more shops in Metropolis than they've got on Themyscira, that's a good place to start." 

"You know the mind of a teenage girl disturbingly well."

Bruce made a small noise, went back to his keyboard. "I am nothing if not disturbing," he said after a minute. 

"Mind if I use your shower? I had an early meeting this morning and it's been a hell of a day. And the water pressure in that hotel leaves a lot to be desired."

"By my guest," Bruce said, not turning. "You know where everything is."

Clark took his time in the shower, and let the hot water beat on him until his skin numbed. He did love Bruce's shower. Bruce's shower, where Bruce probably jacked off. Right here, where he was standing. He tipped his head back into the spray and let the visual of that rocket around his head for a minute or two, Bruce jacking off. It would be firm and brisk and business-like, a bodily function he was taking care of, nothing more. Occasionally maybe he would let himself get a little caught up in it, just every once in a while. Then Bruce would lean against the wall and shut his eyes and let his head fall back and his hand move so, just so—

He shut the water off quickly, not willing to follow those thoughts any further. He had spent so long clamping down on every thought like that, and it felt odd now to give them a little play. Because surely—surely—he could allow himself just a little, now? He stepped out and wrapped a towel around his waist. One more test. Just one more, to see if maybe he had somehow been mistaken, imagined the whole thing. Because if he said something, if he spoke—worse, if he _did_ something, and he was wrong, then he couldn't even conceive the consequences: the shame of Bruce's mild surprise, and then his distaste, and then, worst of all, his faint pity. No, he had to know, he had to be certain.

Wearing nothing but the towel slung about his waist, he went back into the main room. He strode casually toward the monitors, and crossed his arms thoughtfully. Bruce kept typing. But his chest was going ninety miles an hour, and it wasn't just the heartrate now: with his senses stretched and aware, Clark could pick up on all the thousand tingling sentinels of arousal, on Bruce's pupils that quickly dilated and contracted, on the darker, subterranean movement of blood lower in Bruce's body, on—

"Having fun?"

Time crashed to a halt, and Clark knew for a fact his own heart had stopped. Bruce had spun to look at him, his face impassive as ever. If there had been a sheet available to wrap himself in, or a handy mud-covered tarpaulin, Clark would have grabbed it. He had never felt so naked, so ashamed.

He tried to speak, but his throat had gone inexplicably dry. The sound of his swallow was very loud. "No, that's not—I wasn't—" So the awkward stammer was not just in his imagination, then; it had burst into glorious reality, here while he stood dripping on Bruce's floor.

"Get out." 

There was nothing to say that would have made any sense, or that Bruce would have listened to. The only thing left was to obey, and he did: gathered, in stiff, embarrassed silence, his clothes, and went up the stairs, towel clutched desperately close, to the changing rooms on the main floor of the cave. He could get himself out from there. There was no sense trying to go back down to the private level, either, once he had his clothes on; he had no doubt the retinal scanners would already be re-calibrated, the passwords changed. Doors locked, no admittance. 

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, to the rock wall. Pointless: Bruce would already have turned off the audio monitors. He stood a better chance with the solid rock.

* * *

"Two slices of peach pie, please, ice cream on the side. Oh, and a plate of onions rings? Extra large, please."

"You're turning into Wally," Clark said, as the waitress scribbled the rest of their order and went to turn it in at the counter. She had a little smile for him, since he was one of their regulars, and an appraising glance for Dick, who was nothing if not easy on the eyes these days. 

"Hey, I didn't have lunch, or come to think of it breakfast. And you did say you were buying." Dick leaned back and tipped his sunglasses down. "So what's up?"

"Well." Clark folded his hands. "I was wondering if you would be willing to take something to the Manor for me."

Dick made that mouth motion like he was chewing something, sucking on his teeth a little. "Huh," he said. "Okay. Like what?"

Clark pulled it from his jacket and placed it on the table. "A letter."

Dick stared down at it. "Wow," he said. "Your plan sucks."

Clark tamped down his irritation. "I don't have a plan," he said. "Will you take this, or not?"

Dick craned his head and looked out the window, fingers drumming on the naugahyde back of the booth. "Why is Bruce not talking to you?" he said. 

"We had a disagreement a while ago."

Dick's head swiveled back to his, his dark eyes uncomfortably like someone else's in their seeming inability to veer aside, in the way they bored into you. You wouldn't think that was something that could be taught. He shoved the sunglasses back up his nose. "What did you do?"

"Something I should not have."

"So on a scale of one to ten, with one being 'forgot to re-fold the handtowel in the guest bathroom' and ten being—"

"Eleven."

Dick digested this a moment, chewing his ice (loudly, Clark noted) and staring at him from behind those glasses. "Did you fuck around?"

Dick might be a grown man now, but he would always be nine years old to Clark, and he had to suppress an involuntary flinch at the profanity. He wondered what it was like for Bruce, seeing Dick the man he was today, remembering every day the fierce scrawny grief-crazed little boy he had been. His chest gave a wrench, thinking of Bruce, and for a second he missed what Dick had actually asked. "Excuse me," he said. "What?"

"I said, did you fuck around? Because I can't think what else would make Bruce this mad at you."

Clark leaned forward. "I did not have sex with anyone, no, but Dick—are you under the impression that Bruce and I—I think you have misunderstood," he finished, as the waitress brought the pies and onions rings, and a black coffee for him. 

"You are fucking kidding me," Dick said, and Clark frowned at him. The waitress slipped him the tab, and he waited until she had retreated a suitable distance. "Holy fucking wow," added Dick, who clearly had no such scruples. "You're not shitting me?"

"Dick. Bruce and I are not lovers. Please lower your voice."

Dick sat back, his fingers returning to their arpeggio beat against the booth. He looked like the wind had been knocked out of him. Clark sipped his coffee and grimaced at its bitterness. At least it had some taste. Most of what he had put in his mouth in the last two weeks had tasted like ash. 

"Never even kissed? Or just never gone all the way?"

"I have no intention of having this discussion with you."

"Wow, not even kissed, huh. Okay, I don't mind saying it, you got me. I didn't think much in this life could surprise me, but that's it, you did it. Seriously, I just assumed for years that you guys were fucking each other's brains out on a more or less regular basis."

Clark spread his hands, resisted the urge to hurl the cup through the plate glass window onto the street and right through the concrete. "Well, you were mistaken," he said tersely. 

"Apparently."

"So, about this letter," Clark continued.

"Don't you want to know why?"

"Don't I want to know why what?"

"Don't you want to know why I thought that?"

"No," he said, and his voice went beyond terse to menacing. "I don't."

"It's because I've never been around two people more obviously in love with each other, is all."

It was Clark's turn to have the wind knocked out of him, and it was a few minutes before he could trust himself to speak. It was like Dick had reached right into his utility belt (which was probably slung, ammo-style, under his jacket right now) and pulled out a Batarang that had sliced right through him. "Will you take him the letter," was all he said. 

Dick was poking at his pie with his fork, all his interest in food obviously evaporated. "Sure," he said. "I'll take it. On one condition."

Clark's fingers closed around his cooling coffee, the urge to hurl it through the window gone. Now he just wanted to launch it through Dick's skull. "Condition," he mused. "You know, I was just remembering something. I was remembering a twelve-year-old kid I once knew who decided he was going to take the Batmobile out for a little joyride, and ended up blasting a nitrogen hole through about three million dollars of premium engineering. I was remembering a boy who wanted a chance to prove himself, and got that chance handed to him by someone who trusted him. I seem to remember someone who needed my help to make sure he wasn't garroted with grappling wire before his sixteenth birthday, on more than one occasion. Do you have any memory of all that?"

Dick twirled his fork. "I do," he said, suddenly grave. "You have never not been there for me, Clark. I was only going to say, my condition is just that you tell me what you did."

"Yeah, I thought that's where you might be going with that."

"You can't send me in there blind."

Clark sighed. "What you are asking me to do would invade Bruce's privacy—violate it—even more than I already have, and I won't do that."

"Ah." The fork speared a peach, which he sucked lazily. "Violated his privacy. You used your powers when you definitely should not have, didn't you?"

"Something like that."

"Specifics?"

Clark shook his head. "No. For his sake, not for mine. If knowing specifics is your condition for this, then I will have to do without your help."

"Without my help," Dick said skeptically. "Where exactly would that leave you? He's ignoring your e-mails and your texts, and you can't get into the Batcave anymore. So I'm pretty much all you've got."

"Yes," Clark acknowledged. "But if the price of getting Bruce to listen to me is yet another violation of his privacy, then it's too high. I won't do it. I'm sorry, Dick, I'm not going to tell you this."

Dick flashed a grin. "I didn't think you would. Just checking, though. So, okay, what's the plan? I take this to him, where? You want him in the cave, or somewhere else, when he reads it? And what do you want me to say?"

For a minute Clark looked at the envelope on the table. "You know what," he said. "You know what," he repeated, and rested his forehead on his fingers. "Never mind," he said, and slipped the envelope back in his jacket.

"Clark—wait, I never said I wouldn't—"

"I know," he said. "I know. But you were right to start with. My plan does suck. He doesn't want to talk to me, and I need to respect that. I'm not going to send you to do the job I should have been able to do, though I appreciate that you were willing to try. Bruce has made up his mind, and I know better than anyone what that means. Here," he said, pulling out two twenties. "Get yourself some actual food. According to Alfred you live on cereal in that godforsaken apartment of yours back in Bludhaven. Eat something, why don't you." He rose, nodding politely to the waitress, ignoring Dick's protests. He put a hand on Dick's shoulder.

"Watch yourself out there, little bird," he said, the long-ago name making him forget momentarily the feel of hardened muscle under that jacket, the too-wise eyes behind those goddamn glasses. He strode out, setting the bell on the door tinkling, and stood for a few minutes at the street corner, letting the wind whip him, wishing he could just rise, rise into the air right here, in front of everybody, until the chill air had lashed him clean. 

He pulled his coat tighter about him and headed into the thick jostle of the sidewalk, one more lost among the crowd.

* * *

The rest of his day was a blur of exhaustion and bad writing. Lois read his draft article about the negotiations with the Gotham longshoreman's union in silence, her brows inching higher with each paragraph. "It's bad," he said, as she was reading, and "What do you think?" when she was finished.

"That it's bad. Did you pay Jimmy to write this?"

He snatched it from her. "I said it was a draft. Don't you have anything constructive to say?"

"Um, start over?" She cocked her head at him, tucking a lock of dark hair behind her ear. "Clark, what's wrong? You've been completely off your game for weeks now, and this reads like it was written by a fourth-grade girl."

"I recall you being a little less honest when we were dating. Thanks for the encouragement."

She cocked her head the other direction, in a way he found intensely annoying. Her concern was about to edge into pity. "You know you can always talk to me whenever you—"

"I'll have another draft by tomorrow," he said, hunching back over his laptop. He heard her sigh, heard the click of her heels as she moved away. The blinking cursor on his screen held no answers for him, but he still waited to go home until the rest of the building was dark and empty; at least pretending to work would spare him being waylaid by a worried Lois. He didn't turn the lights on when he got home, either. He didn't actually need them to see, but other people found it unsettling, so his whole life he had gotten into the habit of turning on the lights. He even turned them on in his own apartment, when he was alone, and right now the thought of that irritated him too. The darkness was his small rebellion. 

He ate a bowl of cereal sitting in the dark. He set it down when it occurred to him he was turning into Dick. He wasn't actually hungry; he could go for days without eating, probably weeks, and not notice it. Why did he try to pretend he was like everyone else? What contest was he hoping to win? As though there was some prize for Most Human, and he was determined to stay in the running. "Fuck that," he said aloud. That was another thing: he was going to swear more. 

"Language," said a gravelly voice in the dark, and Clark leaped to his feet. 

"Christ," he said, and Bruce switched on a nearby lamp. He was just leaning against the windowsill, like he probably had been for the last twenty minutes, or an hour: the noise of his heartrate and breathing buried in the thousand other noises Clark ignored, his stillness born of long training. He wasn't even in the Batsuit, which was somehow more worrisome; only Bruce Wayne could look more intimidating in charcoal-gray Armani than in bullet-proof Kevlar. 

"I guess it's stupid to ask how you got in," Clark said, and Bruce held up his key. "Right," he sighed. "Of course."

"And here I thought," Bruce said, "that you needed to learn to be more manipulative. That was quite some job you did on Dick today."

He thought about prevaricating, but he was done with that. "You didn't leave me much choice," he said. "You've ignored every text, e-mail and phone call for two weeks. You've even instructed Alfred not to pass on my messages. Exactly what else was there for me to do?"

"Nothing. But it was a nice touch, pretending you had a letter you wanted him to deliver, then changing your mind. Very affecting."

"Was there any other way to get you to talk to me? You've never refused Dick anything, if he really asked it of you, but you would if the request came from me. It was easy enough to make him think it wasn't coming from me." He could almost see the scene: Dick's earnest, impassioned face, Bruce's suspicious one. _You just have to see him, that's all I'm asking_. Bruce shaking his head. _He just played you, kid_ , and Dick saying _No, you don't understand, he told me to forget the whole thing, he gave up. But I'm asking this one thing of you._

Bruce was regarding him in the lamplight, nothing on his face, and Clark knew this was as far as Dick's advocacy would take him: Bruce's presence in his apartment, nothing more. The day's accumulated irritation surged into anger. He switched off the light. "I like it dark," he said. 

"So talk," Bruce said. The anger was fast becoming something else, Clark noted with alarm. Something like rage. He kept his voice carefully controlled.

"I've been thinking," he said. "I've been thinking, these last couple of days, because I've had time to think, and I've been thinking, what exactly you could ever do, could possibly ever do, that would make me treat you the way you've treated me these past few weeks."

A slight shift, from the figure outlined against the window, but no response. "Because I'm just trying to imagine it," Clark said. "Honestly, I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. And I think that no matter what, I would give you the benefit of the doubt. And if I were angry at you—as God knows I have been, more times than I can count—then I would come to you, I would tell you about it, I would give you the chance to apologize, or at least explain. But this? This petulant _bullshit_ , where you pull the plug on me, on our friendship, on fifteen years of the most significant relationship in my life, like it was nothing? Like it was fucking _nothing_ ," and the profanities felt good on his tongue, rich and satisfying and solid. "Like I was nothing. Never, not in a thousand years would I have done that to you. Fuck you, Bruce Wayne."

Bruce put his hands in his pockets. "Your apology," he said. "It's not going so well."

"Fine," Clark said, his voice level now. "You want an apology, you got it. I fucked up. I get that. I would take back what I did, if I could. It was stupid, and it was foolish, and it was insulting. I get all that, and I'm sorry for it. But at least I give second chances to the people I love. At least I have the consolation of knowing I'm about a hundred times more human than you, and I wasn't even born here."

A slight twitch to Bruce's eyelid, and years of reading that unreadable face told Clark his shaft had hit home. _Good_ , he thought exultantly. _Good. I hope that hurt like hell_. "And another thing," he said, unable to stop himself now. "I've seen you give chance after chance to other people. To Dick—he fucking wrecked a Batmobile! And what did you say? Oh, well, all boys go through it. You know what, Bruce? No, all boys do not go through that! I never destroyed any of my parents' priceless possessions, not that they had any to begin with. And Jason, don't even get me started on all the chances you've handed that little twit—"

More than a twitch of eyelid now, a full-body flinch, but Clark was beyond caring. "But for some reason, I'm the exception to every rule, I get held to some impossibly high standard, I'm the one who gets no second chances. Well, fuck that. Fuck that, and fuck you. You're not a person, you're a machine, and it was my mistake to ever try to listen to your heart, because you've made it abundantly clear you do not fucking have one."

Bruce wasn't even looking at him, just studying the edge of the rug. The silence stretched, and Clark got his breathing under control, replayed everything he had just said. _Jesus_ , he thought. He waited for Bruce to walk out, and that would be the end, that would be the no going back. They would never be them again. His lips felt curiously numb. He had just thrust the knife in at every point he could find, and he wanted to hurl it away, to wipe the blood off his hands, to cross the room and pull Bruce into his arms, but he knew he would never be allowed to touch him again. And yet, somehow, Bruce was still standing there. 

"You humiliated me," Bruce said at last, his voice strangely raw. "Can you understand that?"

Clark bowed his head. "Yes. It was never my intention. But yes, I do understand that."

"Any chance you could tell me why you felt like mocking me?"

"I— _mocking_ you? Bruce, that was never—that was not what I was doing. I would never."

"It's what it felt like." For a crunching moment, Clark saw everything that had happened that night as Bruce had experienced it, and bowed his head further. 

"I—I know. But that wasn't what I was trying to do. I just wanted to know, if possibly. . ." He trailed off, because he didn't know the words. "Fifteen years is a long time," he tried. "A long time to want someone who does not want you back. I have made my peace with that, or I thought I had. Kryptonian sexuality, it's not like human sexuality, I know that. But when I realized that there might be a possibility. . . yes, I made a foolish decision. I couldn't stop myself, when I realized there was a possibility that I might not be, that in what I felt I could possibly not be . . ." he swallowed. "Alone."

That got him Bruce's attention like he had said the one word of English in a morass of gibberish. He just looked at Clark, for a long stretch, and then he nodded, slowly, like Clark had somehow made an interesting point instead of rambling disconnectedly. Bruce crossed the room, and Clark couldn't hear what was happening in Bruce's chest over the thunderous noise of his own. Bruce stopped, right in front of him, the two of them, in the dark. 

"No," he said. "You were never that." And he put his hand on Clark's jaw. Just a hand there, no motion, just his hand, but somehow it was the tenderest, most erotic thing that had ever happened to his skin. The touch arced to his groin, and in the quicksilver flash of fantasy Clark had taken that hand and moved it lower and cupped it around himself and was rubbing himself to climax on it, groaning. . . 

The hand fell away. Bruce was walking out. He stopped at the door, and turned. "You were right," he said. "Everything you said about me. For what it's worth, I apologize."

The door clicked behind him, and Clark stayed rooted, frozen. He was afraid to move, afraid the molecules of that touch on his jaw would drift away and be lost. "Wait," he said, belatedly. In his head, he seized Bruce's hand in his own, kissed him, kissed Bruce, because what else was that hand but permission, what would that even feel like, what would that even be like. 

He fully intended to find out.

* * *

It would have been easy work to fly to Gotham and get there long before Bruce, to be there waiting for him. But some instinct told him no. He had gotten himself into this situation by using his powers, and using them to get out would not be the way to go. He would wait, and give Bruce the dignity of his own space, and the time to occupy it, before he showed up. 

If he had miscalculated, the tunnel doors would not slide open for him, he told himself. But they did. The scanners blinked in silence, at each bend of the tunnel. No gates crashed shut, no rock slid to bar his passage. At the final turn, the door to the cave opened, and he glimpsed the Batmobile, the equipment, the dripping stalactites in the chilled dark. Not a sound from anywhere. But the scanners had been re-set, so there was that. 

At the door to the private chambers, he paused. The pad blinked green at the print of his thumb, and the precipitous stairs appeared. Still no sound from below. In the room, all monitors were turned off, and there was only darkness. Was he upstairs, then? Clark glanced around, not needing light to see everything he needed. The door to the small bedroom was open, and there was a heartbeat inside it. A heartbeat that was aware of him, because he heard it—felt it—speed up. 

Clark slipped inside the door, clicked it shut behind him. Bruce was lying there, bare-chested under the covers, arms behind his head. He wasn't sure Bruce could see him, or see him well, at any rate. There was no moonlight to step into, and as far as he could tell no light to flip on. _Someday he's going to break a leg on the way to the bathroom_ , Clark thought. 

He wished he hadn't thought it, because all he could see now was five years ago, when Bruce had in fact broken his leg, snapped his femur like a twig. The quick slice of knife through grappling wire, and Bruce had been falling, and he would have been able to shoot out more line if he had just been conscious, if his head had not struck the outcrop of steel two seconds after the wire had been sliced. "Lucky it wasn't his spine," the doctor had said crisply. Clark had never wanted to take someone's clipboard and stuff it down their throat so much as he had that day, when Bruce was lying white and still in a hospital bed. He had hated his own stupid invulnerable bones that day, because what good were they, if Bruce's could be ground to powder?

He knew Bruce couldn't see his eyes. But he could see Bruce's, their quick twitch of uncertainty. He could hear the triphammer of Bruce's heart. Clark pulled his t-shirt over his head, undid his pants, stepped out of his shoes, and that was it, he was naked. Naked in Bruce's bedroom. He walked to the side of the bed, and Bruce's eyes followed him, or his outline. 

"Is this okay?" Clark asked, his voice hoarse, and for answer the bed creaked, sheets moved, space was being made for him to slide in. Bruce was going to wait for him, then. All right, he could do that. He reached a hand to Bruce's face in the twin of his earlier gesture, and let it rest on Bruce's jaw. 

"Tell me what's okay to do," he said. 

In answer Bruce's hand rested on his face, cradling his jaw, too. "You shaved," Bruce said, and Clark felt a stir of blush. 

"Well, yeah. I didn't know. . ." _if you'd ever been with a man, and how much male was too much_ , he wanted to say but didn't. He shifted closer, and Bruce's breathing hitched. "Tell me what you want to do," he said. "Anything you want, I'm going to say yes."

"Kiss," Bruce said. "I want to kiss."

The sound of that curled in his abdomen. Bruce's lips were firm and warm and far better at kissing than he could have predicted, and where had he gotten the idea that Bruce somehow did not know what he was doing? Though objectively speaking it wasn't much of a kiss; it was two people who just wanted in and near and next to, and the rasp and slide of Bruce's tongue was impossibly hotter than anything artful could have been. Clark pulled back the covers because he didn't need moonlight to see this, and he wanted to see, really see. Maybe it wasn't fair that Bruce was far more visible to him than he to Bruce, but screw that.

He bit back everything he wanted to say: each _Holy God, you're beautiful_ , each _let me kiss every inch of you_ , each _can I touch you_. He just touched, letting his hands map the scars, the muscle. He watched Bruce's cock, how it jerked and filled. He saw the twitch of Bruce's hand, like he wanted to cover himself. 

"Can I suck you," Clark managed. "I want to suck you."

A spasm of uncertainty on Bruce's face. "I don't—do you want me to—"

White-hot light shook his middle. He grasped the back of Bruce's hair and spilled words into his ear. "Yeah, I want you to come in my mouth. All in my mouth. I want to taste your come in the back of my throat, I want to swallow it, I want to be tasting it for days. I want to eat nothing for the next week but your come. Let yourself go in my mouth, fuck my mouth like no one else can see, like I know you want to, paint my mouth with your come."

Bruce's groan was long and deep, and he shuddered underneath Clark, gripped his shoulders. _Dirty talk, huh_ , he thought. _Good to know_. And he slid down and swallowed Bruce's cock, the whole long firm length of it. 

"Clark—Jesus, Clark—don't—I can't—" Bruce's whispers were fevered above him. Because of course Bruce would whisper in bed; of course there were walls and veils and hidden moats, even here. Here in his most private of retreats, this refuge that was only for him and whose gates he guarded, even here Bruce was only going to whisper in bed. _Fuck that_ , Clark thought. _Before this night is over, you're gonna yell_. 

His own cock was too painful to touch, he was so hard. Bruce's fingers on his shoulders, his hair, were rough, digging at him, pushing him. _Yes, that's it, come on_ , and he could feel the shaking in Bruce's whole body. His fingers strayed to Bruce's balls, and he thought Bruce was going to lift off the mattress. That was good to know too, so he pulled his mouth off and gave his balls some serious attention, holding them in his mouth, tumbling their heavy weight in his fingers. "Have to come," came the desperate whisper, and he swallowed cock again as Bruce arched, writhed, pumped come into his mouth. Clark swallowed desperately, lost in the taste smell feel of Bruce.

"God fuck yes," Clark moaned as soon as he had a mouth that wasn't full of cock and come. He wanted to crawl down the back of his own throat and lick the come there. His whole body was beyond over-stimulated, was shaking with it, and all he needed—all he wanted—was to do what he did, which was to crawl up on Bruce and just hump him, just grind, his cock just wanting _touch_ and _now_ and _fuck fuck yes_. It was all kinds of inelegant. But Bruce's arms were around him, whispering something, God only knew what. And then Bruce had the back of his head and aimed for his ear. "Come for me," he husked, and Clark fucked hot skin, not even knowing what he was fucking against but just _Bruce Bruce Bruce_. 

"Sorry, sorry," Clark gasped, when he had air again. There was a cooling puddle of come on Bruce's hip, and he dived for the sheet to wipe it off in a quick agony of embarrassment, only Bruce was there first, swiping a hand in it and _holy fucking God_ licking his fingers. And then Bruce was pulling him up, kissing him, enfolding him. There was a thing he was doing with his tongue that sent shudders down Clark's body. He could feel the coil begin in his abdomen again, plunge lower. He pulled the sheet a little closer. 

"What are you doing," gusted the warm baritone across his mouth. 

"Oh, just. . . you know—"

"You don't have to be ashamed of your recovery time," Bruce said, and there was a warm lazy smile in his voice that coaxed Clark's cock from half-hard to aching for it.

"I don't want you to think I'm—" _not human_. "Some kind of crazed sex freak," he said instead.

Bruce didn't laugh. "Come here," he said, and kissed him like there was something he was trying to say behind it. He rolled them so he was on top, and sat up, straddling Clark. He was breathtakingly gorgeous, every scar and ripple, right down to the half-forgotten come smear on his hip. Clark brushed a thoughtful finger across it. "So that's one fantasy down, sort of," he said.

"Sort of?"

"Well. To be honest, in my fantasy, I come on the Batsuit."

"I think the reality of that would be far less comfortable than you're imagining."

Clark laughed at that, long and deep. "Well, a guy can dream." Bruce's narrowed eyes made him laugh even more.

"This better not be going where I think it is," he said suspiciously.

"Hey. The Batmobile is very durable. I'm sure it can stand up to a little recreational activity."

"Not on your life, Kent," he growled. And he resettled, shifted, in a way that tore a groan from Clark's throat. Bruce might be in afterglow, but Clark's body was still tormenting him, and Bruce didn't seem to get—didn't seem to understand—oh. Evidently he did. Bruce had settled in a way that aligned Clark's cock with the crack of his ass, and was slowly moving back and forth. Clark gripped the sheets and noticed too late he was tearing them. Probably worth more than a month's salary. 

"If you don't stop doing that," he said in a strangled voice, "I'm going to come again, really very soon."

"I thought that was the idea."

Clark gripped the muscles of Bruce's ass, dug his fingers in, thrust up and up. "Bruce—I need—can I just—"

"Wouldn't you rather fuck me?" Bruce asked, which was all it took to send him over the edge again. He was thrusting up into warm balls and ass and dark secret places, spraying come like a firehose, not even caring that his back was spasming up and he was grunting, groaning shamelessly. Bruce's eyes on him were intent, transfixed. 

"Oh God," Clark gasped, and collapsed back. Bruce was lazily fisting his cock, and watching him. 

"Clark."

"Mnh."

"Are you still hard?"

Now he was even more grateful for the dark that obscured him to Bruce's eyes, because he felt the red burn wash his face. "It will go away soon," he said. 

Bruce leaned down and pinned his wrists. "That would be unfortunate," he murmured, bending to tongue and suckle his neck. It made it hard to think while he was doing these strange and talented things with his mouth, and Clark bucked underneath the arms that held him fast. 

"I thought—" he panted, "I got the impression you did not so much know—unnh, that you were not exactly experienced in—God, stop, too much. . ."

Bruce sat back, considering. "I'm not what you would call virginal," he said. "But this I've never done before, it's true."

"This as in. . . sex with a man?"

"This as in, sex with someone who knows me. This is. . . it's more difficult than I would have thought."

"Ah." Clark assessed this. As always with Bruce, there was the surface layer of what was being said, and then the submarine iceberg of the rest of it, and it was what you didn't see that would slice you open. "So that's a yes on the sex with a man thing."

The eyes above his were wary. "Do you care about who I've had sex with?"

"No," he temporized. "Not really. I would be lying if I said I wouldn't prefer them all to have been meaningless."

Bruce had Clark's hand in his, and was examining it: spreading the fingers, stroking them. "Some of them were, some of them weren't. But this is another order of thing. Tell me," he said frowning, "you understand why this scares the hell out of me. Why it should scare the hell out of you." 

Clark studied their bodies, where plane of flesh met stretch of muscle, where hand joined hand. There were any number of possible answers and plausible lies. He could pretend not to understand. "I never said it didn't. But here we are."

And Bruce bent his forehead to tip against Clark's own, rested like that for long minutes. "Still hard, I notice," he whispered, and Clark gave a small laugh and torqued them over again, so he was on top this time. 

"True," he said. "And I think an offer was made earlier that I'd like to return to." He let himself grind against Bruce's semi-hard cock, leaking against him—leaking quite a lot, in fact. Bruce snaked a hand in between them, and rubbed Clark's wet cock. Clark's arms shook. Bruce ran a thumb up the shaft, and liquid dripped off his hand. Bruce held his hand up in the dark as if he could see the copious sticky fluid dripping off of it. Clark ducked his head. "Sorry," he whispered. "I—it's—a Kryptonian thing, there's a lot of—"

Bruce made a noise he hadn't heard before, and locked his arm around Clark's neck, pulling him close. "Wet for me," he gasped. "Are you wet for me?"

"God, yes," he said and Bruce shuddered, a full-body shiver down his skin. 

He rubbed his cock against Bruce's even harder. Bruce's cock would be coated with it, sticky. Clark wanted to swallow him down again, tasting his own pre-come mingled with Bruce's. He wanted to taste their come together, wanted to crawl inside Bruce's beautiful cock, inside his skin.

"Listen," said Bruce, and Clark waited, but then realized he wasn't going to say anything else: it was a command, not a conversational segue. And so he did. 

Ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk went Bruce's heart, strong and unstoppable, and underneath he heard the answering churn of his own heartbeat, and they were almost in sync, just a fraction of a millisecond apart. One would beat, the other would follow, right behind. Maybe, if he kept listening, they would fall into harmony. If their hearts could do it, why not the rest of them? 

The thing to do was to listen. 

 

**Epilogue:**

No sunlight penetrated that room, but Clark had been wrong about no light at all: at 6:30, a soft white glow began to suffuse the walls, upward from the floor, slowly lightening the room. At 6:35, a gentle digitized voice said, "Good morning, Mr. Wayne." Clark glanced next to him, where the Mr. Wayne in question was face down and unmoving. "Bruce," he said quietly. No answer but the steady rise and fall of breath.

He wondered if he should feel a little guilty about that. He could have shown a little more self-restraint, last night. That last time had been purely unnecessary, and by four in the morning (his internal clock was accurate to the minute) he maybe ought to have shown a little more interest in his partner's need for sleep. Maybe they hadn't needed to visit every single ride in the amusement park last night; some things could have waited.

Except always in the back of his head had been the fear that there wasn't going to be a second time. Half of him was waiting for it, expecting it; knowing that when Bruce rolled over this morning, he would say that it could never happen again, that it was too dangerous, exposed them to too many vulnerabilities, created too many distractions. He knew the chances of Bruce saying that were maybe better than even. And maybe that thought had been in Bruce's head, too, because he had acted like he hadn't wanted to stop, either. 

"Seven o'clock, Mr. Wayne," crooned the soft female voice. Bruce was burrowing deeper in the sheets. Speaking of the sheets, Clark was pretty sure these would need to be burned. Not only were they splattered with more semen than really bore thinking about, but there were several substantial rips in them — a crosswise one that stretched a good three feet, with frayed ends, and represented his futile attempt at exercising some self-restraint while buried to the balls in Bruce the first time. But then Bruce had dropped his head and given a guttural, quavering moan of pure pleasure, and yeah, that had been the end of self-restraint.

"Good morning, Mr. Wayne. It's 7:05. Shall I send your breakfast order to Mr. Pennyworth?" Clark thought he detected a faintly chiding note to the voice now, and wondered just how Bruce had this thing programmed, and how long it would take before it slid into berating. He had never thought of Bruce as being particularly hard to wake up in the morning, but the thought that he might be was oddly endearing. It made something twist inside him. It made him want to wake Bruce up and kiss his sleep-warmed neck, nuzzle his chest. His cock stirred at the thought, and he tried to quash the stirrings. He would not wake Bruce up with yet another stiff one poking him in the hip, like some horny teenager, or some alien sex freak. 

"Bruce," he whispered softly, landing a kiss on his shoulder. "How do I turn off the alarm?"

"Leave me the fuck alone," Bruce growled, and Clark scowled, until he realized the lights had shut off instantly, and the voice was silenced. Well, that was one way to hit the snooze button. He settled in beside Bruce's slumbering form that showed no further signs of consciousness. He dozed on and off for the next few hours. He needed much less sleep than Bruce, but it was pleasant nonetheless to drift and wake up next to a warm body with sleep-softened muscles. He was yanked out of a particularly pleasant reverie about how exactly he might consider waking Bruce up by a tinny insistent beep. It seemed to have no effect on Bruce.

"Bruce," he whispered. He shook him gently. "Bruce."

Bruce groaned, shifted. Then his head was up with a snap. "What time is it?" he husked.

"It's a little before ten. I tried to—"

"Shit," said Bruce, lunging for the beep, which was coming from the bottom shelf of his nightstand. "Ah, hell." He retrieved the phone and clicked it, rubbing a bleary hand through his hair, which Clark noted was perpendicular to his head, in spots. "Hi," he rasped into the phone, then cleared his throat. "Sorry I didn't call. I was—"

"You feeling okay? You sound like hell." Clark could hear Dick's worried voice on the other end, and it wouldn't have taken superhearing either. 

"I'll be all right. Just had a rough night." Clark's chuckle shook the bed, and Bruce aimed a death glare in his direction. With his squinty eyes and perpendicular hair, it was a little less than impressive. "Sorry about missing breakfast. How about we catch up later this week."

"Okay, sure, no problem. There was actually something I wanted to talk to you about, but if you're feeling rough it can wait. If you ran into trouble last night, you should have pinged me. Things were pretty quiet around here."

"It was nothing I couldn't handle." Clark cocked a brow at that, and Bruce aimed a pillow in the general direction of his face. 

"Okay, well, take it easy then old man. Hey, how'd things go with Clark, are you gonna let him live?"

"This time."

"Cool. Any idea where he might be then? I need to ask him about those data transmissions he monitored last week, and he's not at the office. No answer on his phone either."

"He's on a mission, actually."

"A mission?" Clark could hear the sound of something in the background, something being crumpled. "Really. What kind of mission?"

"Just something he needs to take care of on his own. Leave a message at the Watchtower, I'm sure he'll check in later on."

"Okay then." There was an odd noise on the other end, like Dick had something caught in his throat. "I'll be sure to do that. Well, if you see him, let him know I hope everything went okay on his super top-secret very important mission." 

Bruce was practically biting through his lower jaw. "Yes," he said tersely.

"Because it's important to stay safe, on a mission. You just never can tell. It's a good idea always to wear some kind of protection when—"

"Oh for God's sake," Bruce growled, and clicked off the phone. Clark gave himself over to silent laughter, as much at Bruce's chagrin as Dick's insolence. 

"Okay, come on, you deserved that," he said. "I cannot believe you are in charge of strategy for the League, how are we not all dead. Bald-faced lying, that was what you came up with?"

"I am a little sleep-deprived, in case you hadn't noticed," Bruce said in the same growl. "Good God. I can see I'm going to have to keep a tranquilizer hypodermic in my nightstand if I'm going to get any sleep."

Anyone else might have made a joke about needing some Kryptonite, but he knew Bruce wouldn't. Had never. He had a flash of memory—lying in the cold wet dirt, Bruce's face above him intent, trying to dig a kryptonite bullet out of his chest. _I can't, I'll have to get you back to the cave_ , and both of them knowing what the odds were of making it in time. Almost he had said, leave it, forget it, let me go; the pain had whited out almost everything else, and he had just wanted it to end. But Bruce's face would not admit defeat, and so he had hung on. Bruce's arm had been strength under him, lifting him up, Bruce's voice had kept him going a minute more, and then a minute more, and one more minute past what he thought he could bear. No, no Kryptonite jokes around here. Once, when Flash had made some lame crack, Bruce had barked, "Enough," and that had been the end of it. 

He had been so absorbed in thinking about the Kryptonite he had blown right past the rest of what Bruce had said, and what it meant. "Ah," he said. "So you think that's something you might need on a more or less regular basis," he said lightly. 

"It depends."

"On what?"

"On how much you're willing to put up with."

Clark's chest collapsed and rearranged itself. He did the only thing he wanted, which was to wrap Bruce in his arms, just enfold him. "A surprising amount," he whispered into dark hair, and they stayed like that, Bruce's head resting on his chest, Clark afraid to move, this thing somehow unbearably more intimate than anything they had done the night before.

* * *

Dick clicked off the phone and stared at it for a minute, still laughing. 

"Very mature, Dickiebird."

Dick frowned at the crumpled bag of Cheez-its on the bed next to him, the orange-ish crumbs on his mattress. "Yeah, well, he can stand with taking himself a little less seriously." 

"No argument here." The Cheez-its bag was launched at the trash can across the room, bounced off the rim, and rolled to a stop next to last week's recycling and a pile of dirty T shirts. 

"Hey," Dick said. 

"Sorry, am I messing with your housekeeping here? Didn't mean to fuck with the feng shui of mold and dirty dishes you've got going on. Hire a maid why don't you, I know you've got the money for it, Waynelet."

 _And what would you know about my bank account_ , Dick almost said, but figured it was pointless, and would lead them nowhere good. Not that there was any road to good from where they were. "Come on, Jay, don't be that way," he said instead, softening his voice just enough, and Jason quit licking the orange off his fingers and pulled himself on his elbows closer to where Dick still lay stretched on the bed. 

"Such a good little bird," Jason said, mockingly, but lowered his lips to brush against Dick's. "It would make it easier to hate your guts if you weren't so fucking hot."

"Right back at you," Dick murmured. Jason's eyes scrutinized him from three inches above his face. 

"So," he said. "The fact that he's finally getting the fucking he so richly deserves. Think that makes things easier for us, or harder?"

"What us. There is no us. This isn't a relationship, this is what bad judgment looks like."

"Suit yourself," Jason said with a grin that was not at all pleasant. Rapacious, was how Dick would describe most of Jason's smiles, and what the hell was wrong with him that that was not at all a turn-off. "So tell me, was it bad judgment, or something else, when I was balls-deep in your ass last night and you were moaning _Love you, love you, love you so fucking much_?"

Dick's backhand across the face was well-aimed and had his full force behind it, but Jason caught it with a laugh. "Fuck you," Dick ground out, pushing Jason down into the bed.

"Hey hey hey," he said. And then: "Hey." He pulled Dick's face down to his until they were nose to nose, forehead to forehead. "You think it's just you," he whispered. "You think it's not the same for me. Since I was fifteen, it's the same for me."

Dick's mouth took his. _We have to stop this_ , he thought for the nine millionth time, and _I will never stop this_ , for the nine millionth time. 

"You'll never tell him," Jason said softly, the same silk-and-leather mocking tone curling in his throat. "Daddy might be disappointed. Daddy might get his nut off wherever he wants, but he wanted better than sodomizing the family black sheep for his little faggot Gyp boy, didn't he."

"Watch your mouth," Dick said through clenched teeth. 

"You don't object to my mouth when it's full of your cock," but the comeback was automatic at this point, part of their stock-in-trade.

"I'll tell him," Dick said, not even believing it any more. "I will, I promise you."

"You never will. Just kiss me, I don't even care, you think I'm like you? I don't need Daddy's approval. Kiss me," he said, and Dick did. "Think they're fucking right now?" he said with a wicked smile through the kiss, and Dick raised his head. 

"I am honestly trying not to think about that," he said.

"Yeah, I know you are, but not for the reasons you're pretending. You're trying not to think about it because it gets you hot to think about it. It gets you hot to think about them together like that. It should. It's fucking hot."

"Don't you ever shut up," murmured Dick against his jaw, brushing kisses.

"That's rich, coming from you. Tell me you're not thinking about it. Objectively speaking, two of the most beautiful men on the face of the planet, fucking each other senseless."

"You need to stop." 

"Yeah, 'cause it's really turning you off. I can feel you right now, you're practically leaking on my leg."

"That I am. And that would have nothing to do with the fact that you're stretched naked in my bed, underneath me, letting me kiss you." He gripped Jason's head. "I don't need to think about anything or anyone else, when you're here."

Jason wrenched his head away. "You say things like that," he said, his voice gone strange. 

The bed was afloat on a tide that carried them away from the dim aqueous skies of Bludhaven. That was what being with Jason felt like: like being cut adrift, loose on open ocean, only a thin raft to cling to and sharks circling beneath. The buzz of Dick's phone vibrated the pillows. "Hang on," Dick said, and "Fuck that," said Jason, grabbing the phone. 

"Give it back, it's—"

"Ignore it. Forget about him. About both of them."

"I can't do—"

The phone arced through the air, and this time, Jason made the trash can. Dick listened to it land with a thunk and a small shattering sound. "This time," he said. "This time, I am actually gonna kill you."

Jason's grin was back: all teeth. "Gotta catch me first."

**Author's Note:**

> I think purists of the fandom will find much to dislike in what I write in the DC Universe, because in my head the various threads of canon are a glorious mish-mash, and where one is in apparent contradiction, I just pick whichever interpretation I like best, and reboot entirely if I don't like any of them. I think that malleability is what makes this such an amazing medium to play in, but those who think deference should be paid above all to the comics canon will be displeased. I got pulled back in to this world through the animation (Young Justice, Justice League) so I guess if I privilege anything in my head, it's that. But my honest apologies to those who know this canon so much better than I ever could, and my gratitude to those whose scholarship and devotion to this astounding art form awes me every day.


End file.
